


Letters to a Ghost

by MonaBee



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Anxiety, Blood and Injury, Car Accidents, Character Study, Gen, I blame Tori Amos and her utter brilliance in terms of song writing, Kitagawa Daiichi, Non Canon I guess?, This is just introspection on Tobio's feelings, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, a bit graphic, after the whole abandoning him on the court thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 21:16:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6675709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonaBee/pseuds/MonaBee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His parents worry, the coach calls, his teammates (<i>ex-teammates</i>, he reminds himself, <i>or maybe never really teammates at all</i>) visit and leave notes he never touches. They pile up, a stack of half-hearted apologies that they never bother voicing because they know Tobio does not listen.</p>
<p>He runs and runs and never stops, because if he does he may never get up again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letters to a Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to 'Bells for Her' by Tori Amos on repeat for extra effect, especially at the beginning. That song is entirely to blame for this fic. This is maybe the most depressing thing I've ever written.

His hands shake, though not from the cold. His breath comes in ugly inhales and stammering exhales as he cries, silent sobs that wrack his body and tear at him until he is raw. He doesn’t know how to feel, how to handle something so strong as _failure_ and _emotion_ and that makes him different, makes him wrong.

Makes people push him away when all he needs is to be pulled closer.

Tobio wraps his arms around himself as he rocks back and forth in his bed, the storm that batters relentlessly at his windows reflecting so perfectly his mental state he wishes it would stop so that he could stop. That he could be numb, stop _feeling_ because feeling _hurt._ It _hurt._ And it doesn’t ever seem to stop.

His fingers won’t stop shaking, or maybe that’s just him. His shirt is soaked where his eyes are pressed to it, saline clinging to his cheeks and his lips and making him gag. He wants it to stop.

Thunder booms outside and echoes inside his head and Tobio wishes only for a peaceful bliss he cannot attain. Not until he has a volleyball in his hands and hears the satisfying squeak of rubber on a court. But he cannot return to that, to his sanctuary. Not now. _Maybe not ever._

He must find a new catharsis.

So when he wakes up in the morning he runs, and he runs until he cannot breathe, cannot feel, cannot hear. Until all that is left is exhaustion and ache and pain. Until his eyesight wavers with each step. He cannot feel any longer, and this is exactly what he needed.

He sees them sometimes, and the panic claws its way up his throat and whispers in his ear until his feet pick up that familiar blissful rhythm and he is running all over again. They look remorseful, in that brief glimpse he catches out of the corner of his eyes. But he cannot stop, cannot rest.

What if he cannot get up again?

His parents worry, the coach calls, his teammates ( _ex-teammates,_ he reminds himself, _or maybe never really teammates at all_ ) visit and leave notes he never touches. They pile up, a stack of half-hearted apologies that they never bother voicing because they know Tobio does not listen.

He is a shadow of his former self, a ghost. He drifts in and out of life so sharply it makes him dizzy, until he retreats further and further back, past the point of true humanity.

He runs.

As he runs, before the exhaustion and the thrum strips his mind to the point of static, he thinks. He wonders how people have friends. How people _make_ friends. If he ever had any. Or at least any that were real. How it feels to have them, people who you touch and who touch back because they _want_ to.

He runs, but he does not run fast enough.

Afterwards he tells his mother he wasn’t thinking. But that is a lie. He was thinking, he was thinking too much, not not enough. Thinking so much that he did not stop when the truck hurtled down the road and took him with it. Did not stop thinking even as his bones broke and shattered and his muscles squelched and he hit the sidewalk. As his insides joined his outsides in a merry dance and his skin shredded finely, mixing with the little rocks his body slides across. Even as people crowded him and asked if he was alright, and someone hurled at the sight of his twisted limbs and neck that doesn’t seem to sit properly anymore.

His eyebrows want to furrow when they ask him questions, when the blaring horn of an ambulance grows softer instead of louder, but nothing seems to be working properly and his mouth tastes like cotton ( _harsher than cotton, like something metallic he can’t quite recall)._

When he wakes up he wants to run, but instead they tell him he cannot run. Not any longer. That maybe he will never run again, and certainly not any time in the near future. They visit and he sleeps and the letters pile up all over again, but remain unread.

Tobio realises that while feeling _hurts,_ thinking is far worse evil.

He takes the first letter from the pile and tears it to pieces.


End file.
